Sandra’s Miscellany

Last Friday night, I went somewhere I’ve never been in my life: to a Quaker meditation meeting.

A friend of a friend of a friend was in town from England and the dSO and I were happily showing her around. One thing she wanted to do was attend the Sky Space Viewing on Friday evening. After a lovely dinner at Baba Yega’s in the Heights (she pronounced the rotisserie chicken as “almost good enough to be served in France”, which is high praise), we drove to the Live Oak Friends Meeting House right on the 7:45 dot.

As you might expect, the building was extremely simple: four or five rows of pews radiated inward from each wall toward the center of the room. The walls were painted a soft white, and hardwood floors had been finished in a matte varnish or polyeurethane.

And above, the ceiling was open to the sky. At first I thought the glass was some new or advanced material that didn’t have any glare or distortion effects. Then a handful of birds chirped while flying over and I realized the big square wasn’t glassed at all.

About twenty people were present. No one spoke. Some occasionally changed positions to view the sky from a different perspective. Some kept their eyes closed in meditation. Others looked around, experiencing the other people in the room.

Overhead, the clouds slipped silently across the sky space opening. Its color, the true blue of Texas summer, began to subtly shift and darken. After a time, the clouds disappeared and all that was left was a block of blue that steadily deepened. Eventually, the navy turned to black.

The clerk then rose and said that he was going to close the roof. We were invited to watch either from inside the building or outside. We chose to stay in. The roof slowly crawled from east to west until the open square was shielded from the night. Another flick of the switch, and blue light shown in the square. It was daytime again, after sunset.

The entire process took about an hour and a quarter, but it felt like fifteen minutes. I practiced mindfulness meditation, in which I concentrated on the sounds, scents, and feelings that came to me, and alternated that with glances up at the sky space.

When we left, and all through Saturday, I felt as if the moments would go on forever, as if I had learned in the short span of an hour and a quarter how to really listen and feel. Even tonight, Sunday, I feel as if the day has taken its own sweet time. Usually the days fly by, mostly because I cram as much activity into them as possible. But this weekend has been different.

I would like to go back next Friday. I don’t envision becoming a Quaker, but the Sky Space is open to everyone and well worth the time to drive up and back. Especially if it gives me my days back!